Research on a process‐oriented integrated system driven by manufacturing information for the crank shaft of an agricultural diesel engine

Abstract

A process‐oriented integrated information system driven by manufacturing information (MI) is built for the crank shaft 6L23H of an agricultural diesel engine, in view of manufacturing informatics. The research about the process‐oriented system just focuses on the process integration for geometric and non‐geometric information, the acquiring of MI model, the setup of object‐oriented engineering database, and the layout of logical inferential rules. The key to setting up the information system lies in the architecture of the MI model and its data structure during process planning. The transfer and operation of MI from information source to information acceptor is implemented by the interference and control of a cognition subject. The mass of data of manufacturing information processed by the system is stored in the object‐oriented engineering database. On the principle an inferential engine based on fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, an optimal scheme of process planning is obtained by the transfer and organisation of the mass of data. The system builds the decision rules for operation sequencing in a technique decision module according to the serial number of operation sequencing. The process‐oriented information system lays out several function modules such as input and description modules, drawing generator, and process card generator. The inferential engine based on the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation, named the Mycin algorithm, is applied to the process planning for the crank shaft. By the fuzzy function and fuzzy rule matrix, a transfer from the definite variables, such as dimension, intensity, thickness, and precision, to the fuzzy variables, involving factor weight set, rule set and process set, is implemented. Relative correct process is determined by the credibility of the manufacturing process. This inferential engine is a new methodology applying fuzzy conception to process planning. Safety factors and transition factors in planning are taken into account sufficiently. A serial of schemes are obtained by various thresholds. All these offer more choices for process planning, more widely and more reliably. An example of process planning for crank shaft in agricultural diesel engine verifies the developed methodology based on manufacturing information.